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GRAHAM WALKER
THE ORANGE ORDER IN SCOTLAND
BETWEEN THE WARS
SUMMARY: This paper focuses on the theme of religious conflict within the working
class in inter-war Scotland. It pays particular attention to the Protestant working
class of the industrial lowlands and to the role of the exclusively Protestant secret
society of Irish origin, the Orange Order. It attempts to explain why the inter-war
period saw an upsurge in membership of sectarian organisations like the Orange
Order and their activities; and at the same time was notable for a broadening of
Labour Party support among the working class which transcended religious divi-
sions. It argues that sectarian and class loyalties often went together and in some
ways reinforced each other. The Orange Order leadership's Conservative politics is
stressed but it is contended that the Order's appeal to the working class was to a
large extent based on issues such as education and mixed marriages and perceived
Irish Catholic immigration, issues which did not break down neatly into party
political terms. It is argued that the Orange Order's social role was of great
significance in this period of economic austerity and mass unemployment.
Introduction
The Orange Order came into existence in County Armagh in Ireland in
1795, the product of conflict between Protestants and Catholics over land
and employment. It was, initially, a society controlled by the Church of
Ireland landed gentry and a Loyalist force pledged to defend Crown and
Constitution against rebellious elements in Ireland. It is believed to have
played a prominent part in putting down the United Irishmen rebellion of
1798.'
During the nineteenth century the Order, while remaining an oath-
bound, masonic-style secret society and exclusively Protestant, became less
identified with the Established Church and the landowners, and more of a
pan-denominational body which included many Presbyterians, notwith-
standing the participation of large numbers of the latter in the 1798 rebel-
lion in Ulster. The Order also became decidedly more plebeian in terms of
its social profile. In the nineteenth century the Order spread to Scotland
and England and several points of the Empire; however, it was in Scotland,
mainly through the efforts of the considerable numbers of Protestant Irish
1
For the origin and early development of Orangeism see H. Senior, Orangeism in
Ireland and Britain 1795-1836 (Londen, 1960).
International Review of Social History, XXXVII (1992), pp. 177-206
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2
migrants, that its strength and influence were greatest.
Even in the inter-war period of the twentieth century, the most salient
characteristic of the Orange Order in Scotland was its importance as a focus
for the Protestant Irish in Scotland. This article will suggest that a sense of
Protestant Irish identity, built up during the nineteenth century by succes-
sive waves of immigrants, was maintained in the early decades of the
twentieth by immigrants and their Scottish-born descendents; this was done
principally through the Orange Order, but also through a collection of
"satellite" organisations around it such as the Glasgow Ulster Association
(a friendly society originally called the Glasgow Antrim and Down Benevo-
lent Association when set up in 1883), the Orange and Protestant Friendly
Association, the Royal Black Preceptory, the Apprentice Boys of Derry,
and some Church congregations which were usually led by evangelical Irish
Protestant preachers. These organisations were where a distinctively Irish
Protestant presence was felt, a presence concentrated in the industrial west
of Scotland - in Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Renfrewshire, but
also to a limited extent in Dunbartonshire, Stirlingshire and the Lothians.
Significantly, the main source of information about these organisations,
particularly the Orange Order, is the files of the Belfast Weekly News which
carried notes on their activities throughout the period under study; rela-
tively little information can be gleaned from the Scottish press or, indeed,
any other Scottish sources. The other main source referred to here is an
English-based journal, The Orange Standard, which appeared between
1914 and 1928.
The Belfast Weekly News's reports on Orange lodges in Scotland varied
in the amount of detail they carried but they are generally an invaluable
guide to Orange activity of a religious, political and social nature. They help
us considerably in determining which of these adjectives best describes the
Orange Order in this period. Moreover, they provide insights into the role
of women in the Order, into the appeal of the Order in a popular cultural
sense, and into the dynamics of Protestant-Catholic relations in this very
politically fluid, economically depressed and socially tense era.
Of course, the Orange Order in Scotland had to address issues of peculiar
relevance to Scotland, and this article will consider these. However, its
overall character, as in the nineteenth century, continued to be defined by
Irish indices such as the names of lodges, the imagery of the Order's
2
Elaine McFarland's Protestants First (Edinburgh, 1991) is a pathbreaking work on the
Orange Order in nineteenth-century Scotland, and on Protestant Irish immigration. It is
based on her doctoral thesis "The Loyal Orange Institution in Scotland 1799-1900"
(University of Glasgow, 1986) which I have used as my main reference point for the
nineteenth-century background. On the theme of Protestant Irish immigrants see also G.
Walker, "The Protestant Irish in Scotland", in T.M. Devine (ed.), Irish Immigrants and
Scottish Society in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Edinburgh, 1991), pp. 44-66.
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banners and regalia, the overriding importance of Irish affairs in the Or-
ange list of priorities, and the large number of Irish-born members, espe-
cially office-bearers, down into the 1930s. A couple of items from the
Belfast Weekly News will illustrate the point. In December 1934 a report of
an Orange social gathering in Grangemouth stated that the majority pre-
sent was of the younger generation and "Sons of Scotland"; the report went
on to say: "The Ulster element was also represented, but, unlike similar
gatherings in Glasgow and the West, Ulster's sons were here in the decided
minority."3 Back in January 1929 the Reverend James Brisby, an Ulster-
born maverick preacher who had, in tandem with the Orange Order,
organised a formidable anti-Irish Home Rule campaign in Scotland before
the First World War, addressed the "Loyal Sons of Ulster" lodge in
Glasgow as follows: "As sons of Ulster they had the honour of Ulster to
maintain in that city of Glasgow, and to give the people of Scotland to
understand that they belonged to an unconquered and imperial province.
That was the proudest heritage that anyone could claim, to be an Ulsterman
and the son of an Ulsterman. Let them realise their responsibility of leading
clean, straight, upright lives, maintaining their principles, and the people of
Scotland would respect them."4 It is most significant that a speech like this
could have been made as late as 1929; it surely indicates that an Irish
Protestant community identity was a fact of life for thousands of people in
Scotland, although its profile was not as high as that of its Catholic Irish
counterpart. It is impossible to say - without access to Orange Order
membership records - just what percentages of the Order's membership
were Irish and Scottish. The situation, of course, is confused by the large
number of members who would have been Scottish-born with Irish parents
or grandparents. If Orange Order membership claims of around 40,000 are
taken as in any way accurate as an average over the inter-war period5 the
majority would undoubtedly have been Scots born, but it is doubtful if more
than a small minority would have had no Irish family background. The
situation is further complicated by the likelihood of Irish settlers in Scotland
being of Scottish descent themselves. What is more important to stress is
the way that cultural bonds between Scotland and Ulster were constantly
affirmed and celebrated in Orange rhetoric and oratory. It is also important
to state right away the overwhelmingly proletarian character of the Order,
as established in the nineteenth century.6 Irish Protestant immigration to
3
Belfast Weekly News (hereafter BWN) 28 December 1934 (my emphasis); BWN
references, unless otherwise stated, are to the "Scottish Orange Notes" column in the
paper.
4
Ibid., 31 January 1929.
5
According to the Scottish Orangeman's Historical Directory 1913-1914 (British Li-
brary, pp. 2510 bac) the Order had almost 400 lodges at this time. Their numbers grew
considerably after the First World War.
6
See McFarland, "The Loyal Orange Institution", p. 96.
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Scotland was of an industrial worker variety, often skilled but just as often
labourers. The Order sought to ingratiate itself with business and profes-
sional people, but any successes it contrived in this respect were largely
overlooked by the Scottish establishment and Scottish press which took, in
general, a disparaging view of its activities. Notwithstanding the force of
anti-Catholic sentiment among Scots of all classes, there was much dislike
of Irish political and religious quarrels being imported into Scotland. For all
the Order's religious professions, the mainstream Scottish Churches re-
garded it balefully, although it should be said that there were individual
Clergymen who gave it their blessing and who responded heartily to its
warnings about Catholic Church activities in Scotland. However, the image
held by some outsiders of the Orange Order having had great leverage and
influence in the realms of employment, and political and religious affairs,
has to be set against the self-perception, on the part of Orange leaders and
rank and file, of the movement's marginalisation, of its struggle against the
hostility of the bulk of Scottish opinion-formers.7 Certainly, the role of
freemasonry with which, in terms of organisational structure the Orange
Order had much in common, seems to have been of far greater moment in
those areas of Scottish life where the Orange Order has been said to wield
power and influence.8
Politics in the aftermath of the Great War
Spokesmen for the Orange Order, and its own historians9, have always
claimed that the organisation is first and foremost a religious body. Support
for and loyalty to the British monarchy, constitution and laws, have always
been conditional on their guaranteeing Protestant religious hegemony and
keeping the Roman Catholic Church from the levers of State power.
Declarations of The Order's religious credentials above all else were made
by officials in Scotland in the inter-war period with some regularity.10
However, scrutiny of the reports of the speeches made by leadership figures
at Orange meetings reveals much political content; indeed, political and
religious concerns were repeatedly fused to produce an identification of
7
See Grand Master Mclnnes Shaw's speech about Catholic influence on the press in
Scotland, BWN, 5 February 1931.
8
For the only penetrating analysis of Freemasonry in modern Scotland to date see
G.P.T. Finn, "In the grip? A psychological and historical exploration of the social
significance of freemasonry in Scotland", in G. Walker and T. Gallagher (eds), Sermons
and Battle Hymns: Protestant Popular Culture in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh, 1990),
pp. 160-192.
9
See M.W. Dewar, J. Brown, and S.E. Long, Orangeism: A New Historical Ap-
preciation (Belfast, 1967).
10
See, for example, reports of speeches by Frank Dorrian, BWN, 11 January 1934, and
Mclnnes Shaw, BWN, 15 December 1938.
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Catholicism with "disloyal" political activity in a campaign which was
perceived as having the objective of undermining Protestantism in
Scotland.
The Orange Order had had strong links with the Conservatives (or
Unionists as they were more commonly known in Scotland after the Irish
Home Rule issue)11 since the 1870s. The links were formalised before the
First World War when the then Grand Master the Reverend David Ness
(who was to hold this supreme office until 1925) was co-opted to the
Executive Committee of the Western Divisional Council of the Party.12 The
Unionists' pro-Ulster stance in the Home Rule dramas of the 1880s and
1912-1914, rallied the Protestant Irish elements in Scotland and galvanised
the Orange Order as a grassroots campaign machine in many working-class
constituencies, perhaps most notably Partick and Bridgeton in Glasgow.13
The Order provided a populist flavour to the Unionist political message:
they beat the drum for "King and Country" and Empire unity. Indeed, the
Order, in the pre-war period, largely undertook in the West of Scotland,
the role played so successfully by the Primrose League in England.14 The
Primrose League did have a Scottish presence15, but its role was limited and
often tended to fade into the more robustly energetic Orange movement.
The immediate post-First World War period was one of great political
and social turbulence. It saw much industrial unrest, popular disenchant-
ment with the government over unfulfilled promises, the strains on the
social fabric produced by demobilisation and unemployment, and the wider
international context of upheaval, particularly in Russia. In this period the
Orange Order's presentation of itself as a bastion of patriotism and conser-
vatism propelled it into open confrontation with the increasingly powerful
political challenge mounted by the Labour movement.
The Order suffered considerable losses among its members in the war. In
the Pollokshaws lodge, for example, nineteen volunteers fell in action.16 In
the Anderston district lodges twelve out of fifty-two volunteers were killed,
the rest wounded.17 Funds were raised for soldiers returning and large
reunion meetings held. The movement was forced to re-organise and
recruit new blood and this it did with notable returns. In June 1920 the
11
This has always been a more popular tag in Scotland than the word "Tory" with its
aristocratic and privileged connotations.
12
McFarland, "The Loyal Orange Institution", pp. 429-431.
13
For an account of Orange anti-Home Rule campaigning in Bridgeton at this time, see
diaries of Alexander McCallum Scott (Liberal M.P. for the constituency) 1912-1913,
Glasgow University Special Collection.
14
See M. Pugh, The Tories and the People (Oxford, 1985).
15
Seel.G.C. Hutchinson, A Political History of Scotland 1832-1924 (Edinburgh, 1986),
pp. 222-223.
16
BWN, 29 May 1919.
17
Ibid., 22 May 1919.
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General Secretary, in his report to the annual Meeting of Grand Lodge,
stated that the previous year's intake of new members - some 4,151 in all -
represented the greatest net increase in membership in the Order's history
in Scotland.18 It should be noted, however, that the figure comprises men,
women and juveniles. Attendances at the annual 12th of July Battle of the
Boyne parades also soared: in 1919 an estimated 15,000 attended at Ruther-
glen,19 just outside Glasgow, while in 1920 between 25,000 and 30,000 were
said to have converged on Govan, with a further 5,000 in Motherwell.20
From the mid-1920s estimated attendances of 40,000 and 50,000 seemed to
be the norm at these annual demonstrations. The General Secretary's
reports, as publicised in the Belfast Weekly News, indicate that it was not
until the depths of economic recession in the early 1930s that membership
figures were adversely affected in this period.
Perhaps emboldened by the new wave of recruits, the Order adopted a
relatively high political profile after the war. Essentially, this revolved
around two issues: (1) the rise in labour unrest; (2) the 1918 Education Act
which had been passed under wartime legislation. The latter piece of
legislation, passed by the Conservative-dominated coalition government,
provided - under section 18 of the Act - for the maintenance by the State of
denominational schools in Scotland which meant, in practice, Roman Cath-
olic schools. There was an immediate outcry on the part of some sections of
Protestant opinion about such an issue being decided without recourse to an
election, and the Orange Order undoubtedly profited from the anger which
erupted. It may indeed be speculated that this was the single most impor-
tant factor in the Order's membership boom. Certainly, the Order was
sufficiently confident of the benefit of the issue to put up eight candidates
for the elections to the Glasgow Education Authority in April 1919. In the
event, five were returned, and only a tactical error in putting up three
candidates in the one ward (Hillhead and Partick), deprived the Order of
greater success.21 Among those elected were Grand Master Ness and the
redoubtable Rev. Brisby. Sir Charles Cleland, an Orangeman and a leading
Conservative, became Chairman of the new Education Authority. Educa-
tion was to remain a hot topic, much exploited by the Order, throughout the
inter-war era and, indeed, far beyond.
However, it is the other political topic which has to receive more atten-
tion at this juncture. The increasing orientation of working people towards
Labour politics - in effect towards the Independent Labour Party (ILP) at
18
Ibid., 17 June 1920. The figures broke down as: 1588 men, 806 women, 1757 juveniles.
19
Ibid., 17 July 1919.
20
Ibid., 15 July 1920.
21
Ibid., 10 April 1919. One candidate was elected for St. Rollox and Maryhill; 2 for
Govan, Tradeston and Pollok; 1 for Hillhead and Partick; 1 for Springburn and
Camlachie.
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this time in Scotland - filled Orange leaders with anxiety, especially when
viewed alongside the upsurge in trade-union strength and industrial mil-
itancy which had taken place during the war. In January 1919 engineers on
Clydeside struck for a 40-hour week and the dispute escalated to the point
at which the government ordered tanks to George Square in Glasgow to
avert public disorder. The city was indeed in a ferment, if only briefly.
Orange Order leaders denounced the troublemakers and the agitators, as
they saw them, and the fact that the strike was unofficial allowed them to
play the "constitutionalist" card.22 At a special meeting of Motherwell
Orange and Purple District Lodge in February, the following resolution
was passed unanimously: "that we protest against the action of the self-
styled leaders in causing such an upheaval among the working classes at the
present time, meanwhile pledging ourselves to assist the Government in
every constitutional way".23 In a speech at the Boyne celebrations in July,
the Rev. Buyers Black, a prominent Orange figure at this time, deplored
the activities of "certain trades unions", and called on Orangemen to work
for class harmony.24 As in Belfast at the same time, Orange spokesmen
scapegoated those Catholics who worked, for example, in the shipbuilding
industry. In Scotland, their presence was said to be proof of the effects of
continuing Irish Catholic immigration and the cause of unemployment for
demobilised soldiers. "Bolshevism" in the trade unions was blamed for
such a state of affairs being allowed to transpire.25
This was a heady cocktail of simplistic scapegoating, scaremongering and
loyalist tub-thumping. It is not difficult to appreciate how it might have
appealed to ex-soldiers who had returned to find themselves out of work
and thus apparently unrewarded for their sacrifices. Some anger over this
was directed at the Government and may be said to have taken a politically
radical turn, but in the context of religiously divided Clydeside it seems
likely that it found expression mainly through the loyalist rhetoric of the
Orange Order, and also ex-servicemen's organisations and the ultra-patri-
otic British Workers' League which was also active in Glasgow during and
after the war.26
The Orange Order leaders spared no effort, and used precious little logic,
in identifying "Bolshevism" and Catholicism as soul-mates. They were on
22
It is far harder to find Orange denunciations of official trade-union activity, and there
were Orange leaders who made clear that they were not anti-trade union as such. See
report of speech by Frank Dorrian, BWN, 26 January 1933.
23
BWN, 20 February 1919.
24
Ibid., 17 July 1919.
25
See "Ulster Scot" column in BWN, 28 August 1919.
26
See H. McShane (with Joan Smith), No Mean Fighter (London, 1978), p. 84; see also
C. Wrigley, Lloyd George and the Challenge of Labour (London, 1990), p. 44 regarding
a "revolutionary socialist" ex-servicemen's organisation in Glasgow, and chapters 2-4 in
general for the mood of post-war unrest.
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stronger ground when accusing Labour of forging a political alliance with
the Catholic Church; Labour was well aware of the necessity of Catholic
working-class support and had given every sign of seeking to champion it by
viewing favourably the 1918 Education Act. Orange leaders drew attention
both to this and to Labour's stance on the Irish question (their advocacy of
self-government for the whole island and rejection of Ulster's stand for
Union) as they campaigned for local Unionist candidates in municipal
contests at the end of 1920.27 In March 1921 the Rev. Victor Logan, an
Ulster-born minister at John Street United Free Church in Glasgow and
another prominent Orangeman of this time, told an Orange gathering at St.
Rollox in Glasgow that the "two great enemies" they faced were the
Catholic Church and "Socialist propagandists".28 By this time the Orange
leaders were also participating in the activities of the Scottish Economic
League, an employers' organisation set up to counter the influence as they
saw it of socialist propaganda on working people.29 Speakers invited from
Ulster to address Scottish Orange audiences urged the formation of Pro-
testant trade unions, echoing the establishment in Ulster of a Labour
Association which was connected to the Unionist Party there.30
The Order called openly for employers to employ Protestants instead of
"disloyal" Catholics. One Orangeman who was also an employer, Edward
Douglas, did just this. Douglas was a native of Ulster who came to Glasgow
in 1877 as a young man and found work with the shipping firm of James
Spencer and Company on the Clyde. He rose steadily to become a partner
in the firm and was responsible for its management. Douglas was something
of a figurehead in the Orange movement, particularly in Govan where he
was Master of the numerically strongest male lodge in Scotland.31 He also
ran a children's mission in the area. He was a paternalistic figure who
boasted of the loyalty of his workmen.32 Other Orange leaders remarked
favourably on the all-Protestant nature of that workforce. In May 1926, the
Motherwell Orangeman Ephraim Connor, in his regular column of "Scot-
tish Notes" for the English Orange publication, The Orange Standard, said
that Douglas was "one of the largest employers of labour at the Docks on
the Clyde", and "a strong believer in Orangeism first and always for
employment. Would that other employers may likewise attend first to
27
BWN, 28 October 1920.
28
Ibid., 10 March 1921.
29
See BWN, 10 February 1921; for an account of the development of the Economic
League see A.J. Mclvor, '"A crusade for Capitalism': The Economic League,
1919-39", Journal of Contemporary History, 23 (1988), pp. 631-655.
30
See reports of speeches by William Coote, BWN, 15 July 1920, and William Grant,
BWN, 14 July 1921.
31
Lodge Number 127. It won the "blue riband" for this throughout the inter-war period
and always claimed in excess of 400 members.
32
See report of his Lodge's social gathering BWN, 3 February 1921.
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Protestants and loyal citizens before taking on and keeping disloyal ele-
ments in Papists, Socialists and Communists."33
Thus it is clear that the Orange Order did exercise influence on employ-
ment through the policies of Orange employers like Douglas, and it ad-
vanced a strong paternalistic employer-worker ethic which might well have
made an appeal to workers who feared job insecurity in economically
precarious times.34 Moreover, where it was possible for working men to
advance, perhaps to the rank of foreman, through Orange connections,
many were undoubtedly happy to do so; a presentation to Douglas at an
Orange Social in 1921 was made on behalf of fifty foremen in his employ.35
However, the second part of Connor's remarks suggests that, for the liking
of Orangemen, such employers as Douglas were all too few. Indeed, as will
be made clear, Orange leaders like Connor harboured acute fears that
Orange working men were increasingly turning against employers and
falling under the influence of Labour activists. He believed that employers
were failing to counter this by their reluctance - as he saw it - to put a
premium on loyalty and religious solidarity.
"The Orange vote"
The inter-war period was one of byzantine political flux in Britain, and
perhaps especially in Scotland. This was a period when both class and
sectarian politics enjoyed boom times, if not continuously in both cases. It
was, generally, a period of rising class consciousness and Labour political
advance in Scotland, but so was it also a time when religious sectarian
organisations, both Protestant and Catholic, of which the Orange Order
was the largest but only one of many, made political inroads and strongly
competing claims on working-class loyalties. It was a period of strange
alliances and occurrences, of personal political odysseys, of the emergence
33
Orange Standard (British Library, pp. 265h, hereafter O.S.), May 1926. See also
October 1926 - James Spencer, the head of the firm, was also an Orangeman.
34
Scholarly work on paternalism in an urban industrial context, such as Patrick Joyce's
Work, Society and Politics (Brighton, 1980) for Lancashire, is much needed for Glasgow
and the West of Scotland. Examples like Douglas tend to support Harriet Bradley's
argument that it has survived, in different and changing forms, in the twentieth century in
certain industries. See Bradley, "Change and Continuity in History and Sociology: the
case of Industrial Paternalism", in S. Kendrick, P. Straw and D. McCrone (eds),
Interpreting the Past, Understanding the Present (London, 1990), pp. 177-195.
35
BWN, 3 February 1921. Foremen were often in positions of significant power. In
certain industries they decided who to hire and fire, and thus were, potentially, able to
regulate employment in a sectarian fashion.
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36
of fascism (limited in Scotland) and the strategical twists and turns of
Communism, of the re-emergence of Scottish Nationalism politically, and
of the eruption of the "demonstration politics" of the unemployed and the
hunger marchers.37
The Orange Order might be said to have delivered crucial working-class
votes to the Unionists in several key Scottish constituencies in these years.38
Its importance in this respect has probably been underestimated, due
perhaps to the fact that the Order officially withdrew its representatives
from the Unionist Party councils in 1922, in protest at the Irish Treaty of
December 1921, and set up its own political party, the Orange and Pro-
testant Party (OPP). This action underlined the uneasy nature of the
Orange-Unionist relationship: from its nineteenth century beginnings, it
had always been marked by the Orange insistence that its support was
dependent on the Party upholding Protestant and Loyalist principles.39 The
Order viewed the Irish Treaty as a betrayal of such principles and set out to
make the Party pay a political price. Orange leaders were to proclaim their
intention of doing this over other issues during this period such as the
Catholic Relief Act of 1926, the appointment of an envoy to the Vatican,
and, of course, the 1918 Education Act.40 Some Orange leaders, most
notably Ephraim Connor, lambasted Unionists for allegedly pandering, in
careerist fashion, to the Catholic Church and Catholic voters, and casting
aside their Protestantism.41
However, the OPP never turned out to be a viable political proposition;
the obvious reluctance of many lodges to set up branches, as is clear from
Connor's Orange Standard columns, indicated that there was much dis-
agreement within the Order about organising politically in opposition to the
Unionists.42 Indeed, the Grand Master of the Order in Scotland after 1925,
Archibald Mclnnes Shaw, was a Unionist MP (he had been elected for
Renfrewshire West in 1924) and he never seems to have considered break-
ing with the Party. Neither also did the other Orange Unionist MPs of the
36
The Orange Order refused to accord recognition to the "Fascisti" organisation in
Scotland in the 1920s - see O.S., September 1925. However, some members were
obviously attracted to it and Connor warned them about its Catholic leanings as he saw
them. See O.S., June 1925.
37
For a stimulating account of the wider political developments of the period in relation
to the theme of religious tensions in Scotland, see T. Gallagher, Glasgow: The Uneasy
Peace (Manchester, 1987), chs 3, 4 and 5. For the hunger marches specifically see I.
MacDougall (ed.), Voices from the Hunger Marches (Edinburgh, 1990).
38
See J. Mitchell, Conservatives and the Union (Edinburgh, 1990) p. 10.
39
See McFarland, "The Loyal Orange Institution", p. 407 (statement of Grand Master
William Young).
* Both the Catholic Relief Act and the appointment of the envoy were the work of
Baldwin's Conservative Government; the 1918 Act was passed by the Lloyd George
Coalition Government which was largely Conservative in makeup.
41
See, for example, O.S., August 1923.
42
See, for example, O.S., July 1923.
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time, namely Sir John Gilmour, General Hunter Weston, Lt. Col. T.E.R.
Moore, John L. Baird and William Templeton, although the latter's pop-
ulist approach did not endear him to the Party hierarchy. Connor was
undoubtedly correct in stating, in May 1926, that "the Unionist Party
officially discountenances the introduction of religious feeling into elec-
tions";43 it became increasingly clear that the Party was deeply uneasy about
its Orange image while always grateful for the support the Order could
deliver to it. It is perhaps significant that details of Orange meetings were
seldom published outside Orange journals, except in Northern Ireland.
Orange leaders like Mclnnes Shaw, it can be guessed, might have found
their position rather awkward if their more uncompromising remarks to
Orange audiences had received wide publicity in Scotland.44
Notwithstanding all these points about the tensions in the Orange Order-
Unionist Party relationship, a study of election results in the Inter-war
years, combined with evidence of lodge activity detailed through the co-
lumns of the Belfast Weekly News and the Orange Standard, suggests that
the Orange vote was a meaningful political factor, if an elusive one to define
with complete certainty. In Glasgow the Order was particularly strong in
the shipyard worker areas of Govan and Partick and Anderston in the West
of the city, in the railway worker areas of Maryhill, Springburn and St.
Rollox to the North, and in areas of the east end such as Bridgeton,
Camlachie and Shettleston. All these parliamentary constituencies were
predominantly working class and the kind of seat Labour could hope to
secure after it had emerged as a political force in the post-World War One
years. Eight of these seats mentioned above were, in fact, captured by
Labour in its sensational electoral breakthrough in Glasgow in the 1922
election, a result which threw Conservative Orange leaders into a panic.
The political fortunes of these constituencies thereafter in our period
provide some food for thought.45 The seat of Kelvingrove, which included
the Anderston area and was largely a community of dockers and shipyard
workers, returned a Unionist throughout the period. This was Walter
Elliot, long regarded as a "progressive" Tory who had a benign effect on
the Party's social outlook in Scotland and on its need to make an appeal
across the community and across religious barriers. Even Elliot, however,
was to be found thanking Orange voters at an Orange function in his
constituency in 1931, a telling indication of their importance to him.46 In
43
Ibid., May 1926.
44
This was suggested by Alexander Ratcliffe, leader of the Scottish Protestant League,
who was a prominent critic of the Orange Order leadership in the 1930s. See below, p.
191. See his remarks in the SPL newspaper Vanguard (Mitchell Library Glasgow), 21
March 1934.
45
Election results and statistics contained in F.W.S. Craig, British Parliamentary Elec-
tion Results, 1918-1949 (London, 1977).
46
BWN, 19 November 1931.
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1930 a leading Orangeman in the constituency, Jonathan Harvey, won a
municipal election contest in Anderston and deposed the sitting Labour
councillor. Harvey was the local undertaker and a native of Armagh in
Ulster.47 In the same round of electons in the rest of Glasgow six Orange
Order members (out of six) were returned.48
The Orange vote might also have been crucial in Maryhill where the
Unionists triumphed in the 1924 election, and recaptured the seat from
Labour in the albeit exceptional circumstances of 1931. The Unionist
candidate for Maryhill in these contests, Douglas Jamieson, assiduously
cultivated Orange support in the area by addressing several Orange social
gatherings. In adjacent Springburn, the Unionists won this solidly working-
class seat in 1931, and Mclnnes Shaw chose it to make a stand (which
proved unsuccessful) in a bye-election in 1937. Neighbouring St. Rollox
was always Labour in this period but the Unionist vote was not unsub-
stantial and again an Orange popular base is discernible.
In the east Camlachie was always a hard-fought contest in these years,
with the Unionists triumphing in 1931. Both here and in neighbouring
Shettleston where William Templeton won a bye-election in 1930, the
Orange vote was, if the reports of its activities are any guide, well-dis-
ciplined and active. However, in Bridgeton, where the Order had a very
high profile and where Unionist-sponsored organisations such as the Junior
Imperialist League had been so active in pre-war days,49 the position of the
charismatic Labour leader Jimmy Maxton remained impregnable.
In the West the Orange vote was clearly a decisive factor in Partick which
returned Unionists in 1923, 1931 and 1935; Labour's history of municipal
difficulties here reinforces the point.50 By contrast, Govan, which boasted
some of the strongest Orange lodges in the country, remained in Labour
hands throughout the period, notwithstanding a strong Unionist challenge
in 1931.
In addition to these Glasgow case studies, it should be noted that the seat
of Rutherglen was won by the Unionists in 1931 and 1935; Lanarkshire
North was won by Hugh Ferguson, an outspoken Orangeman, in 1923, and
by the Unionists again in 1931; Lanark was won by Unionists in 1924,1931
and 1935; Coatbridge was won by Templeton in 1931; and both Renfrew-
shire East and West were kept Unionist for the most part throughout the
period. In all of these constituencies too, the Orange Order presence was
47
Ibid., 13 November 1930.
48
Loc. cit.
49
McCallum Scott Diaries, op. cit.
50
See report of local elections in the ILP newspaper Forward, 13 November 1920. The
correspondent called Partick a stronghold of "Carsonism", although some of this feeling
may have died down as the inter-war period wore on, and passions over the Irish issue
relaxed.
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notable and evidently of more than a little political use to the Unionists,
although this is clearer to discern in cases like the industrial town of
Motherwell than for example, the large Renfrewshire seats with their
greater mixture of social classes.
Religious and class loyalties
There is another way of looking at this electoral picture. It would be equally
valid to stress Labour's successes in the constituencies mentioned, and to
argue that the Orange Order's political role on behalf of the Unionists had
very real limitations.51 This is the obvious conclusion to draw from the
statistics concerning such constituencies as Govan and Bridgeton. And in
acknowledging such limitations, we are led on to consider more carefully
the question of the political behaviour and loyalties of the rank and file - as
opposed to the leadership - of the Order. This, it might be suggested, is a
highly complex question.
The first point to stress - or rather to consider in a different light - is the
Orange leadership's concern to attack Labour and Socialism so relentlessly
and, it might be said, so desperately. No one did this more than Ephraim
Connor, the Scottish correspondent of the Orange Standard, for whom
combating socialist influences became a personal obsession. Connor wrote
a series of articles in the Standard on the theme of whether an Orangeman
could be a socialist, a question he answered emphatically in the negative.
However, in the course of his arguments he seemed to be acknowledging
that many Orangemen were attracted to socialism.52 For Connor this may
simply have meant trade-union membership for this too alarmed him: "You
Orangemen and women [. . .] how can you support in any manner by voting
for, working or, aye, by being members of a Trade Union affiliated to and
assisting by your political levy such an ungodly, blasphemous, unpatriotic
body of men known as the Labour Party [. . .] come out of her my people,
be not partakers of her sins, lest ye partake of her plagues!"53
It is clear from this that Orange Order officials looked suspiciously on any
kind of working-class organisation or activity over which they had no
control, and which involved Protestant and Catholic cooperation. The
question of the trade-union levy being paid to the Labour Party obviously
rankled but taking on trade unions, or attempting to stop members joining
51
A study of municipal contests in Glasgow yields similarly ambiguous evidence. In
1938, for example, the Orange vote in wards like Dennistoun, Pollokshaws, Whiteinch
and Sandyford might have helped the Tories (Progressives); however, Labour won
wards such as Govan, Kinning Park, Govanhill and Whitevale where this vote could also
be identified as significant. See Glasgow Herald, 2 November 1938 for detailed results.
52
See O.S., June 1923.
53
Ibid., October 1923.
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them, was a task beyond the Orange leaders. They attempted instead to
prevent Orange Order members joining Labour and Communist political
parties. In December 1923 at a Grand Lodge meeting in Glasgow in the
wake of the election which produced a minority Labour government, it was
agreed "that any member, male or female of the Orange Institution who
joins the ILP, Communist or other socialist political party or who allies
themselves politically with those bodies is to be expelled from the Order.
Disloyalty cannot be tolerated within our Order."54 Soon after, Connor
called on Orangemen to "defy openly all the power - parliamentary or
armed - of the Bolshevic Premier McDonald, and his Atheistic-Papish,
anti-British mercenaries". Connor asserted that the advent of the Labour
Government threatened the activities of the Order and rejoiced that "All
socialists within the ranks have received their marching orders."55
The hysterical nature of the response betrayed the alarm felt by Orange
leaders about the spread of socialism and the appeal of Labour. It is clear
that the leadership perceived a real problem in relation to this within the
ranks of the order. The expulsion resolution was the ultimate weapon to use
but even so there is evidence to suggest that it was not entirely effective. In
November 1926 Connor's column carried a report of a motion tabled (but
not accepted) at a Ladies Orange Association meeting referring to "the
husbands of lady members being disloyal by their being members of Social-
ist and Communist organisations".56 Recently published oral testimonies of
those involved in the Scottish hunger marches and unemployed demonstra-
tions in the late 1920s and early 1930s state that Orange flute band members
participated in the marches, that Orangemen joined the Communist-led
National Unemployed Workers' Movement (NUWM), and that social and
economic distress cut across religious loyalties however firmly held the
latter were.57 In March 1932, in the wake of unemployed disturbances in
which he seems to have known of Orange involvement, Mclnnes Shaw
addressed an Orange gathering and said that the scenes were "not helping
them and [were] not doing the Protestant faith any good".58 The early
1930s, in fact, saw a fall in Orange Order membership, and references on
the part of officials to the adverse economic situation's effect on the Order
could be interpreted as a clear decline in morale. There is even a suggestion
of Order officials playing down the political aspect to their cause in this
54
Ibid., January 1924.
55
Ibid., February 1924.
56
Ibid., November 1926.
57
MacDougall, (ed.). Voices from the Hunger Marches. See testimonies of Phil Gillan
and Michael Clark.
58
BWN, 3 March 1932.
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period for fear of alienating the unemployed and impoverished in their
ranks.59
The Orange Order might also have been galvanised into frenzied anti-
Labour activity in the early twenties as a reaction to the deliberate attempts
made by labour activists and propagandists to win the allegiance of Orange-
men. Indeed, it could be argued that the post-war years witnessed a no-
holds barred propaganda war between the Order and the labour movement
for the loyalties of Protestant workers. The ILP newspaper, Forward,
edited by Tom Johnston, one of the Labour MPs returned to Westminster
in 1922, carried several articles in the early 1920s urging Orangemen to turn
to the Labour cause and claiming that "thousands" of them had done so by
joining the ILP or the Labour Party.60 During the war the nerve centres of
the rent strikes on Clydeside were Govan and Partick and the strikes
involved many men and women who were either Orange Order members or
sympathisers.61 The ILP's leading role in these struggles seems to have won
them the political loyalty of such people. Scrutiny of Forward reveals that
certain ILP branches in Ayrshire used local Orange halls for meetings,62 and
in areas of Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and the Lothians where both the Labour
and Orange movements were strong there seems to have been some kind of
rapport between them. In the 1930s a militant Protestant organisation, the
Scottish Protestant League, led by Alexander Ratcliffe, made political
waves at local level in Glasgow - it won several council seats in the early
1930s - and attacked the Unionists for their "softness" on Protestant
issues.63 It might also be said to have reinforced or encouraged the suspi-
cions of working-class Orangemen that the Order leadership was antag-
onistic to their material welfare and interests. Certainly, Ratcliffe did not
take the view that Orangemen should not, in any circumstances, vote
Labour, although he was loudly critical of Labour's cultivation of Catholic
support.64
It can also be argued that the Orange Order was battling against the tide
concerning the issue of industrial relations. Developments during the war
and after in the heavy industry sector of the economy rendered the chances
of paternalistic employer-worker relations less likely. The war, of course,
gave rise to the celebrated workplace struggles against dilution in the
munitions industry which triggered waves of industrial unrest involving
59
See, for example, the address by Hunter Munn reported in BWN, 14 January 1932.
60
See Forward, 3 February 1923.
61
See J. Melling, Rent Strike! (Edinburgh, 1983), pp. 70-71.
62
See Forward, 23 M a r c h 1929.
63
For Ratcliffe and the SPL see Gallagher Glasgow: The Uneasy Peace, pp. 150-158; S.
Bruce, No Pope of Rome (Edinburgh, 1985), ch. 2.
64
See Vanguard, 20 September 1933.
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skilled workers in shipbuilding and engineering. Many of these workers and
their unions, most notably the boilermakers, had strong Orange and Ma-
sonic allegiances.65 However, Orange loyalties usually did not prevent these
workers acting collectively and combatively against employers on matters
concerning pay and conditions, and they certainly did not prevent the
expansion of trades unionism. Arguably, too, out of these struggles
emerged a stronger sense of class consciousness, however undiminished
sectarian loyalties might be. It is likely that Orangemen took part in the
40-Hour Strike in January 1919, and that knowledge of this further in-
creased the Order officials' determination to curb labour militancy.66
This they proved unable to do. Industrial relations disputes over work-
place practices, workplace bargaining, and control of the day-to-day work-
shop processes proliferated, and defeats at the hands of employers over
such issues in the early 1920s generated much bitterness and resentment
among workers.67 Relations between employers and workers on Clydeside
became increasingly adversarial. Many skilled workers began to abandon
their sectional craft loyalties and embrace a wider sense of working-class
unity. Slumps in the heavy industries resulting in lay-offs exacerbated the
situation. In 1923 the Boilermakers were involved in a long drawn-out
dispute with the Shipbuilding Employers Federation (SEF) in an attempt to
resist changes in workplace practices which they believed would undermine
their control.68 The introduction of welding in the industry in the 1930s
produced another such confrontation between the same parties.69 In engi-
neering similar disputes took place over the restructuring of the labour
process.70
Such important workplace developments perhaps ensured, more than
any other single factor, that Protestant sectarian loyalties did not translate
in a significant number of cases, into Conservative political loyalties. Many
Protestant workers who were Orangemen or sympathetic to the Order in a
tribal or communal sense could also be tireless fighters for their interests in
65
See J. Foster, "A Century of Scottish Labour", Labour History Review, 55 (Spring
1990), pp. 64-68.
66
On this point see also unpublished and unpaginated dissertation held in Mitchell
Library Glasgow: W. Marshall, "The Development of the Orange Order in Scotland".
67
See J. Melling, "Whatever Happened to Red Clydeside?", International Review of
Social History, XXXV (1990), pp. 3-32 on skilled labour and workplace struggles; also
K. Burgess, "Clydeside and the Division of Labour c. 1860-1930", Social History, 11
(May 1986), no. 2, pp. 211-233 regarding the issue of the control of supervisors.
68
See J. McGoldrick, "Crisis and the Division of Labour: Clydeside Shipbuilding in the
Inter-War Period", in T. Dickson (ed.), Capital and Class in Scotland (Edinburgh,
1982), pp. 143-185.
69
Ibid.
70
See A. McKinlay, "Depression and Rank and File Activity: The Amalgamated
Engineering Union, 1919-1939", The Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society, 22
(1987), pp. 22-29.
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the workplace against employers. Such workers would thus most likely
have considered it to be in their interests that their trades unions were
strong and perhaps even militant, and also that Labour was a powerful
political "pressure point" to fortify further the workers' position. As David
Marquand has pointed out in relation to Labour voters in Britain more
generally in this period, a vote for Labour was often cast in the spirit of an
act of self-defence, and we should not forget the extent to which working-
class Labour and Tory supporters shared essentially the same values.71
Support for Labour need not have prevented Orange-minded workers
expressing ultra-Protestant sentiments, marching on the Twelfth of July,
and continuing to eye Catholics unfavourably. It should be remembered
that very few Catholics featured in skilled occupational groups in the
shipyards like the boilermakers. Thus a sense of workers' solidarity over
industrial questions could also, in a way, reinforce Protestant solidarity -
they were all Protestant workers together fighting the bosses during the
week and the Catholics at weekends! In mining areas where the Orange
Order was strong, and grew stronger, in the inter-war period, a similar
situation seems to have obtained: pit towns and villages in Ayrshire, La-
narkshire, Dunbartonshire, Stirlingshire and the Lothians were often dis-
tinguished by their combination of Labour militancy and religious tribal
feeling, Catholic as well as Protestant.72 Certainly, it seems to have been the
case that workers did keep different sets of loyalties apart to a great extent
and that if they recognised contradictions in them, then this was something
they were prepared to live with. There were thus important limitations to
both class and sectarian loyalties and behaviour.
Notwithstanding their pro-employer rhetoric, it seems also to be the case
that Orange leaders could exercise only very limited influence on employ-
ers. A few Orange leaders were employers themselves; the examples of
Douglas and Spencer have been cited, and the Deputy Grand Master in the
1920s, Frank Dorrian, was a coal contractor.73 However, these were the
exceptions rather than the rule and there is no evidence that the Order was
plugged into the higher economic and financial echelons of society. On the
contrary, the plaintive tone and content of the leaders' speeches during the
period rather suggests that they were frustrated that they could not exert
more effective influence. Much bilious speech was directed at employers,
and in particular local authorities, for allegedly employing Catholics ahead
of Protestants.74
71
D. Marquand, The Progressive Dilemma (London, 1991), ch. 5.
72
Protestant examples might be said to be Broxburn and Bo'ness in West Lothian; a
Catholic example is that of Croy in Stirlingshire.
73
See T. Gallagher, Glasgow: The Uneasy Peace, p. 144.
74
See, for example, the speech by Digby S. Brown, as reported in BWN, 30 January
1930.
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In the trough of the economic depression, in 1932, the Order set up
Committees to give advice to unemployed members on the matter of
unemployment benefits.75 This was a deliberate attempt to counter trade-
union and labour activities in this area, and the signs suggest that it failed
quite ignominiously.76 All in all, the Orange Order found it increasingly
difficult, and indeed hopeless, to attempt to steer their members away from
trades unions and, in some cases, from Labour and even Communist
politics. Their political message - where it demanded worker loyalty to the
firm rather than the Union - was often simply ignored, and its success in
winning the Orange working-class vote for the Unionists was also strictly
limited. Labour's political successes in Glasgow and the industrial belt in
Scotland - in 1922 and after - required a large Protestant working-class vote
as well as the Catholic vote; some of this vote, it can be suggested, was also
Orange-coloured. ^
In addition, the removal of the Irish question from British politics in 1922
undoubtedly diminished the potential for sectarian political conflict, and it
also opened the way for the Labour Party to appear more constitutionalist
and "safe" in the eyes of Orangemen who had been offended by its stance
on the Irish issue and the enthusiastic support of some of the party's
spokesmen for the aims of Sinn Fein. The experience of Ramsay McDo-
nald's one year minority government from 1923-1924 might also have
calmed the nerves of those who had been receptive to the dire warnings of
Orange leaders like Connor.
' 'Peaceful penetration''
The issue of unemployment, as has been argued, was a difficult one for the
Orange Order. It led to lapses in membership and apparent participation,
in some cases, in left-wing demonstrations on the problem. However, it was
also an issue which could be hitched to what, in the circumstances of these
economically-depressed years, was a very potent Orange rallying cry: that
of opposition to perceived waves of Irish Catholic immigrants to Scotland.
Statistical evidence on this question, when supplied for instance by the
Glasgow Herald in 1929,78 showed that the actual numbers of Irish im-
75
BWN, 16 June 1932, General Secretary's Report.
76
See BWN, 15 June 1935. The General Secretary's report was still very gloomy on
economic matters and no progress in relation to the welfare initiative was reported.
77
This is also argued in an unpublished paper by J. Melling and I. Patterson, "Sectarian-
ism and Socialism: William Reid and the politics of Labour in Glasgow, 1912-1965".
My thanks to the authors for permission to cite their work. See also I. Patterson, "The
Impact of the Irish Revolution on the Irish Community in Scotland 1916-23" (M. Litt,
University of Strathclyde, 1991), pp. 284-289, 293, regarding Labour successes in areas
such as Larkhall.
78
Glasgow Herald, 25 March 1929. See Gallagher, Glasgow, p. 167.
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